Chairman of Joint Chiefs Torches Trump for War Crimes!!!

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2:49Ben Meiselas:messing up and get your taxes done right. Start filing today in the Credit Karma app. The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, C.Q. Brown Jr., is calling out Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth publicly. Now, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, C.Q. Brown, was fired by Donald Trump and Hegseth back in 2025, and he's now breaking his silence. Now, this comes at the same time that Donald Trump and Hegseth fired the Army Chief of Staff, Randy George, this past week during Donald Trump's catastrophic war in Iran, getting rid of yet another member of the Joint Chiefs and the number one officer in the United States Army, a beloved individual, as was C.Q.

3:40Ben Meiselas:Brown. Well, C.Q. Brown, he was speaking in Harvard and very powerful words that you're probably not going to see anywhere else other than here on the Midas Touch Network. And he didn't hold back. Remember the video I made yesterday, how finally we saw the Joint Chiefs showing public dissent against Donald Trump, Hegseth, and the despicable criminal lawless regime now. Of course, these former top military generals and admirals, they're not going to use that language that I just use, but in their own way, they went there. So let me show you right here, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, C.Q.

4:21Ben Meiselas:Brown. Here he is basically saying that the United States, that Trump and Hegseth with their leadership has frankly been showing such a degree of hubris and arrogance, and there should have been more planning regarding this war in Iran. And he says it's kind of shocking when you hear the amount of aircraft and military equipment that's already been destroyed by Iran in the various military bases that American has in the Middle East, as well as the American aircraft flying over Iran. Here, play this clip. But providing the right capability for our warfighter, both on the offensive and defensive end, our casualty numbers could match, you know, the equivalent of World War II of Vietnam, which is not something we've had to deal with, mostly throughout my career.

5:14And so we can't walk in with a bunch of hubris of this won't happen to us. but we just saw it happen with 13 service members that have been killed 350 or so that have been injured and not to mention number of aircraft that have been lost which you know that's not something we haven't lost a lot of aircraft particularly like an AWACS sitting on a ramp and those are the kinds of things that should shock us a bit into reality that you know war and going into a conflict is not something we you know you just take lightly You've got to take it seriously because you're putting men and women's lives at risk.

5:50And I'll just tell you personally, with every loss, it impacts me. Because I know someone's going to show up in their dress uniform to knock on somebody's door to tell them, you know, your son, your daughter, your husband or wife is no longer with us. And that just disrupts the family. And that weighs heavily on me. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Chairman.

6:11Ben Meiselas:And then more over here from the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, C.Q. Brown Jr. Here he is talking about how inappropriate it was when Pete Hegseth gave a pass to that Apache helicopter pilot who was flying the plane by Kid Rock. and just the awful conduct and behavior and the lack of leadership, frankly, that exists at the highest levels and how that erodes confidence at all of the other levels. Here, play this clip. And there were certain things that would never have even crossed our minds that over the past couple of days I've seen that make me nervous for the institution. This sounds funny, but an army helicopter doing an overflight of Kid Rock, that's like super unprofessional.

7:04Ben Meiselas:The Secretary of Defense deciding there's going to be no accountability for that when the uniform military says that they'll be held accountable is crazy. The Secretary of Defense pulling members off a one-star promotion list for reasons that are almost certainly to do with their identity is crazy. That had never, that's not something that would have happened before. So again, chairman, you know, you're too professional to comment on news because that's not your role. But can you just talk about if you're the chairman and you're thinking about civilian political appointee leadership, what role do they have to build that trust in the institution?

7:46Well, part of this, you know, you think about the role of a military member at the senior level, particularly as a chairman, when you're providing advice. and part of that is being able to provide the advice of how you would handle those types of situations. And I'll just tell you, just like you, I'm concerned. I don't have all the facts on some of these, but having had to deal with situations of unauthorized flybys as a commander, having sat on promotion boards, reviewed results from promotion boards, I know they're fair based on merit. And if what I'm hearing is being reported is true, it is very concerning because it does start to get over and discipline and ensuring that people that are all giving a fair opportunity.

8:39No one wants to be advantaged or disadvantaged based on their background. They just want to have an opportunity to compete. And once you've gone through a promotion board and having sat on promotion boards, as I said, from my experience, they've been fair.

8:58Ben Meiselas:Footnote for all of you not following the news. Now, in case you were wondering, this was an interview, a discussion that was taking place at Harvard. The moderator right there is a former chief of staff to a defense secretary in the prior administration. more from the former chairman of the joint chiefs here right this is some good stuff that he's calling it out like this next what they talk about is how trump and hegseth and the entire trump regime massacred the little girl elementary school and here the former chairman of the joint chief cq brown is talking about ultimately accountability who should be held accountable in the united states and he's saying people should be held accountable there's still a chain of command and anybody who gave that order to massacre the elementary school, killing all of those little girls.

9:51Ben Meiselas:And that was one of many massacres that the Trump regime has engaged in in Iran. There was a prior massacre involving a gym as well. Watch what the former chairman of the Joint Chief says here. Let's play this clip. I'm sure most of you all know the United States made a horrible mistake and hit an Iranian girls' school during the first wave of attacks that killed about 175 people. Most of them were young women who were under the age of 13. And the initial explanation that came out was mixed. The president said the Iranians did it. The Office of the Secretary of Defense of Public Affairs said the advanced AI model did it.

10:34Ben Meiselas:The military, to their credit, said we made a mistake. And there have been different explanations for that, too. So it leads to the question, Chairman, is when there's a targeting process like that, or later down the road, if there is a more autonomous type weapon, and you're trying to figure out who should be accountable in a situation like that, which has always been super important to the U.S. military. How have you thought about that? It's a really hard question. It is, but I still think there's a commander or someone that signs off on, whether it's an analyst that signs off, this is a good target.

11:19In this example that you just talked about, the school, when things get recharacterized or you have bad intel or late intel, I mean, the same thing happened with the Allied Force where we struck a building that we thought we didn't know was a Chinese embassy. Yeah, right. Yeah. In Yugoslavia. In Yugoslavia. So you can make those kinds of mistakes based on the data you have. But the big picture here is, you know, I'd say the commander is ultimately responsible. But it may be somebody down at a lower level that should be checking these things. That's why you want to have a human in a loop that can cross-check it against.

11:56It doesn't even look right. Does this make sense based on our experience? Which is why I think it's still important that we understand some of the basic fundamentals so we don't just kick back and let AI do it all and go, it was AI's fault. And then, you know, is it the person that asked the prompt? Is it the developer of the AI? You could go down several different lawsuits to figure out who would ultimately be responsible. The issue is we've got to figure out in a conflict, how do you continue to keep moving forward? and making sure we're being effective, but also doing things in line with the law of armed conflict.

12:34Ben Meiselas:Great. Thank you. Now, this is a powerful moment. And you see why this guy, C.Q. Brown Jr., rose through the ranks. It should be noted that Donald Trump appointed him to be the chief of staff of the United States Air Force from 2020. And then he served in that position to 2023. and he was basically unanimously voted in by the United States Senate back in 2020. He was Trump's pick in 2020 to be the chief of staff for the United States Air Force. And then Biden elevated him to be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And here he is over here again, talking about the importance of trust and what trust means and building trust within the armed forces, getting the people of America to trust the military.

13:24Ben Meiselas:Let's play this clip. In the military right now and your perspective on the way things are going with that. If I could, one of the things that when I became the chairman, I did a memo that was my expectations of the force. It was a memo that came out the first, you know, I took over on the first of October was a Sunday. That's when I took over. And so it was two October and I had three expectations. And one of those was trust is the foundation of our profession. You know, I was really focused on was how do we build trust within our military and how we take care of our service members and their families.

14:00It's the trust that we have as we work with our civilian leadership and most importantly, trust with the American population. And it takes a lot of work, but I think it's important. And when you have a very divided nation, it makes it even more challenging. And as you look at, you know, as you're talking, a lot of government institutions are coming down in trust. Congress is 6%, just to make you really worried. They're dragging us down from a military perspective. But I think, you know, as I work with service members and the ones I still talk to, that's what they're focused on. um it's probably even more challenging in in the current environment um to to work work through uh and maintain that trust I mean the tough part here is that uh we have a smaller and smaller part of the population that actually knows somebody in the military has a connection to military yeah and the less you know about the military the harder it is for you to have that trust or a small event um can actually really erode that trust yeah and so that's why i think it's really important for our military to you know stay engaged in the communities help people uh have a chance to meet some of our service members and their families because they're people just like you um but they did something that most of our nation doesn't do is raise their right hand and take an oath to support and defend the constitution and so um I still have complete trust and confidence in our military.

15:44And as I have told some military members are still serving, life is not fair. No one said it's going to be easy. Anything that's worth doing takes effort. And maintaining trust and building trust takes effort, and even more so today.

16:00Ben Meiselas:Thank you so much. This is part of that discussion as well. And this is clearly aimed at Hegseth using AI to replace humans making the ultimate decisions about the kill targets and where to shoot. We've seen, I think, in this war already, you know, although we'll gather more evidence of how it was that the Manab Elementary School and other site selections were taken, that it's perhaps AI was picking all of the locations and there was no kind of further double checking the work of the AI. Or, you know, if that wasn't the case, there were, you know, it was people who were involved, you know, in the chain of command.

16:42Ben Meiselas:This is a very important part of this discussion. It's clearly aimed at the reckless use, the disgusting and reckless use of AI by Trump and Hegseth. Let's show you former chairman C.Q. Brown here play this clip. As you go through the charting process, for example, no matter how many people you have, you still have to have, I believe, a person, a human in the loop. Because what AI helps you to do is it helps to provide you options, but you still have someone has to make a decision and use their judgment. Because AI does not have judgment. OK. And so that's an important aspect. And there may be concern that AI is going to give you some bad information or hallucinate.

17:21Well, I've worked with people who've given me bad information. And hallucinate. Sometimes they're hallucinating. Are you smoking something? We're not doing that. So, I mean, so you can't just, just because you have AI, just don't go, hey, AI is taking care of it. We're going to kick back. And, you know, because when you think about war and conflict, this is a human endeavor. And you're putting humans at risk, but you also have to have a human that's in there that is watching to make sure it's doing all the things it's supposed to do. And so you just can't outsource this whole thing to artificial intelligence.

17:55Now, the other part I would also highlight, just as we talk about artificial intelligence, There is this whole aspect, and I felt this way probably 20 years ago when cyber became big with the military, and it was on every PowerPoint slide, like cyber is going to save the world for all the things we're going to do. And we've done the same thing with AI to an extent. Everybody's got AI and saying, well, AI is going to do what? I mean, part of this is you've got to figure out what is it you're trying to achieve, and does AI make it better, or is it just burning up daylight and time and not producing what you need?

18:29You know, and I really believe that the, you know, the quality of the prompt of the question you ask, the iteration you have, that helps you with AI. But if you, you know, garbage in, garbage out, bad prompt, bad answer. And you just can't run with that answer. And so, I mean, there's some real pluses to AI and autonomy, but we still have to pay attention to it because, you know, we're responsible. and it can set the tone for an operation or it could create an issue that you're going to have to deal with as a human. So you want to make sure you're paying attention to what he's doing.

19:06Ben Meiselas:And, you know, they're speaking in Harvard right here. And one of the things that Hegseth did, not just Harvard, but lots of colleges, if Hegseth and Trump and the regime, the Trump regime, viewed the conduct or like a college as being a quote, woke college like Harvard and lots of other schools, then Hegseth has banned all military affiliations with that college. So like Harvard and MIT, and there's so many schools where now our armed forces don't get to interact with students on these campuses. And one of the things, and CQ Brown, he's ROTC, And, you know, he's discussing how really dangerous this is and how so much of what Hegseth is doing.

19:53Ben Meiselas:You know, he goes, I don't know all of the stuff. He goes, but a lot of it's very dangerous. Here, play this clip. That all cooperation between the Department of Defense and Harvard will be cut. We have usually between 20 and 25 active duty lieutenant colonels, colonels who come here. This will be the last time they come, at least for the next few years. There's a bunch of active duty service members who are either captains or majors who are students and then go back into the force. This will be the last year that they're here. Those who are here can finish. And then we're lucky we have a lot of vets.

20:26Ben Meiselas:You know, there have been chiefs of staff of the Army who are in these programs, a lot of very senior leaders. You don't have to comment on Harvard in particular. But to me, the reason it was important is most Harvard students have not met someone in the military until they have an interaction with these people. whether they're international students or sorry to sound mean they're just like so progressive they've never been in that world. Can you just talk a little bit more about like how do we get different parts of American society to either join the military, meet the military, so that we can rebuild some of that trust and there's not such a stark divide?

21:03Well I think that one of the key things I would highlight kind of like you described the value of our service members coming to institutions like Harvard, not only for our service members, but also for the students at Harvard and faculty, because this may be the only military person they have a chance to meet. You know, I'm on faculty at Duke. We have this same conversation of, you know, the value of sending military members to various elite institutions across the United States, because they'll get a perspective that they wouldn't get if they went to one of our war colleges because it's probably more group think at our war colleges than there is coming here because as i sit in the class i co-teach a class with dr peter fever on civil relations and as i listen to it there's things that are being said that you would never hear in a war college but it's good because you have military members in that class that are hearing some things and it's challenging your assumptions and so there's there's some real value and it broadens your perspective to be a critical thinker and invariably you're going to work with if any one of these students goes into into government in like the state department you're gonna have you're gonna work with them yeah and there's some things that you know working with people that don't think like you is probably you know it's important part of leadership and uh we talked a little bit about that backstage um you know part of leadership is working with people that that sometimes can be difficult.

22:32And that, you know, how do you learn how to do that if you, everybody thinks like you, you know, they never challenge your assumptions. And I think there's some real value in that opportunity to interact. The last thing I would say is, as you talked about kind of looking at the military, I'm a big believer. Young people only aspire to be what they see or know about. You don't decide to grow up to be something you never heard of. It's not like you get a ping pong ball at a lotto machine and go, I'm going to be military. I mean, you've really, at some point, someone's going to talk to you and you decide that you're going to major in whatever you're going to major in, what career path you're going to take.

23:13And so the key point is the value of having military members here is you get a chance to meet someone and go, you know, I never thought about joining the military. What's it like? Just like you would do for any other career field. And that's the real value you have in this interaction that happens at the university. Yes. Thank you.

23:33Ben Meiselas:You know, it also should be noted that in the past 24 hours, the email that was sent by Randy George after he was fired, that's the Army Chief of Staff General, four star general, top Army officer, Hegseth fires him in the middle of the war. And lots of people are saying that one of the main reasons is that Randy George was continuing to promote women and black people and that Hexitt didn't like that. He didn't want them to go through the promotion rank. And both this guy and the others there were basically saying, no, you know, Randy George and others were saying, no, we're going to promote people based on merit.

24:16Ben Meiselas:So here's the email that's being sent. This is Randy George's email, former Army Chief of Staff. He was on the Joint Chiefs. He was one of the members there being the top Army officer. Here's his email. Army leaders, I had the chance to speak with a few of you yesterday and wanted to follow up with a broader note of thanks to all of you for your support and exceptional teamwork while I served as the CSA, the Chief of Staff of the Army. As my time in the Army ends, I reflect on the immeasurable pride being part of the Army team has been for me for these past 38 years. I enlisted in the army right out of high school and always made the decision to stay another tour because of the selfless people I was blessed to serve alongside.

24:56Ben Meiselas:It has been the greatest privilege to serve beside you and lead soldiers in support of our country. I know you all continue to stay laser focused on the mission, continue innovating and relentlessly cut through the bureaucracy to get our war fighters what they need to win on the modern battlefield. Our soldiers are truly the best in the world. They deserve tough training and courageous leaders of character. I have no doubt you will all continue to lead with courage, character, and grit. Patty sends her gratitude as well. She's always been inspired by the strength of our army families. This will defend VR, very truly yours, Randy.

25:38Ben Meiselas:And you see what he says right there. Our soldiers are truly the best in the world. They deserve tough training and courageous leaders of character, character and its importance. I want to emphasize that because to me, he was also hinting there, you get the code and language that Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump lack the requisite character. Someone in my view who also clearly lacks the requisite character, MAGA extremist Laura Loomer, the Trump sycophant. And she was responsible for getting the National Security Council Iran director, Nate Swanson, previously fired. And she got him fired before the Iran war.

26:22Ben Meiselas:And here's what Max Blumenthal says. He goes, before Laura Loomer got someone who may or may not be Qasem Soleimani's niece deported, she got former NSC Iran director, Nate Swanson, fired. Swanson correctly warned that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz, hammer U.S. bases across the region, and turn the war into a quagmire. And that's what happens when you lose the critical talent like that, like Randy George, like CQ, like all of these top leaders. I mean, basically the entire Joint Chiefs has been fired by Donald Trump and his despicable regime. Well, Well, anyway, I thought it was great to see the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, CQ Brown Jr., standing up.

27:09Ben Meiselas:Really great to see it. Tell me what you think in the comments below. And I love that we could use this platform at the Midas Touch Network to share with you such incredible, courageous discussions. Hit subscribe. Help us get to 7 million. We appreciate you. And thank you so much for watching. Thanks for watching. Be sure to add the Midas Touch podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast for new updates every single day.

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